Warhammer Armies: Realm of Chaos (5th Edition)

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Warhammer Armies: Chaos (4th Edition) < - Warhammer Armies: Realm of Chaos (5th Edition) - > Warhammer Armies: Hordes of Chaos (6th Edition)
Warhammer Armies: Chaos (4th Edition) < - Warhammer Armies: Realm of Chaos (5th Edition) - > Warhammer Armies: Beasts of Chaos (6th Edition)
Warhammer Armies: Realm of Chaos
Realm of Chaos 5 Cover.jpg
Author(s) Tuomas Pirinen & Rick Priestly
Cover Artist Geoff Taylor
Illustrator(s) John Blanche, Des Hanley, Wayne England, Mark Gibbons, Neil Hodgson Toby Hynes, Paul Smith, Geoff Taylor & John Wigley
Released 1997
Pages 127
ISBN 1-869893-90-5 (1st Edition)

1-872372-60-0 (2nd Edition)

Preceded by Warhammer Armies: Chaos (4th Edition)
Followed by Warhammer Armies: Hordes of Chaos (6th Edition)
Warhammer Armies: Beasts of Chaos (6th Edition)


The Warhammer Armies: Realm of Chaos book is copyright 1997 and describes a primarily mortal Chaos army for the 5th Edition of Warhammer by Games Workshop.

Chaos Gods

The only Chaos gods mentioned in the text are the primary four, Khorne, Tzeentch, Nurgle, and Slaanesh.

Additional elements

The book was published in a boxed set accompanied by 30 chaos spell cards (10 for each power except Khorne), 12 Chaos Gift cards, 20 chaos reward cards, five magic standard cards, a summoning template and 16 counters to track bonuses from the cards. The spell cards were a supplement to the regular spell cards found in the Warhammer Magic supplement, and the chaos reward and magic standard cards were simply wargear cards.

In contrast, the Chaos gift cards continued the practice from the Warhammer Armies: Chaos (4th Edition) boxed set of providing temporary random bonuses or penalties to the Chaos forces.

This book retains the daemonic animosity rules from 4th edition unchanged.

Army composition

Army composition for the Chaos forces is based on warbands. A Chaos force is simply one or more warbands, and each warband is a warlord and that warlord's retinue of one or more units. One limiting factor in warband selection is that the units selected as the retinue for a warlord had to equal or exceed the warlord's value, and marked daemonic warlords could only have daemons of the same mark in their retinue.

Army composition differs between this book and both its successor and predecessor in that it is not possible to mix mortal, beast, and daemonic warbands in the main body of the army. However, as part of the allied forces for the army, warbands from the other two types of Chaos forces were permitted, in addition to other permitted allies depending on the main army type.

Unit types

There are several unit types present in the army book, grouped into categories based on the type of warband to which they belong.

Daemonic Units

Chaos Furies were not present in the army book.

Mortal Unit

The Chaos Warlord could take a mark of chaos to gain various effects including unlocking the ability to take a Juggernaut, Steed of Slaanesh, Disc of Tzeentch or Beast of Nurgle as a mount. The palanquin of Nurgle remains absent from the army book as it was in 4th edition.

Beast Units

Monstrous Host

Special Characters

No special characters are present in this rulebook. Instead, the special characters are detailed in the Warhammer: Champions of Chaos (5th Edition) supplement.